Islands between empires: the Ryukyu Shobun in Japanese and American expansion in the pacific

ABSTRACT The treaty that the Ryukyu Kingdom signed with the US government in 1854 was crucial for understanding cooperation between the US and Japanese governments when the latter annexed the Ryuku Islands in 1879 (an episode known as the Ryukyu shobun). The article explores how Japan-US negotiations over treaty rights facilitated Japan’s ambitions in the Ryukyus, Ogasawara Islands, and Korea, as well as their confrontation when the US annexed the Kingdom of Hawai’i. By the early twentieth century, these two powers had mutually accepted each other’s territorial acquisitions and, in so doing, built their own empires and brought stability to East Asia and the Pacific. Reviewing the informal agreement between Japan and the US during the annexation of the Ryukyus, we can better appreciate how the first shobun set the stage for later events.